The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own. by David Carr

Sep 03, 2008 christa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are so few ways to deviate from the addiction memoir outline, short of posthumous publication. The plot lines are easy, like a murder mystery or a romance novel. Your hero is a drunk/junkie/bulimic/sex addict. Your hero faces a lifestyle change in which the options are extreme: change vs. death. Your hero dusts himself off [typically more than once], washes his hair, excavates the past for meaning and and writes something intelligible about how at one point he poked drugs into his eyeball...more There are so few ways to deviate from the addiction memoir outline, short of posthumous publication. The plot lines are easy, like a murder mystery or a romance novel. Your hero is a drunk/junkie/bulimic/sex addict. Your hero faces a lifestyle change in which the options are extreme: change vs. death. Your hero dusts himself off [typically more than once], washes his hair, excavates the past for meaning and and writes something intelligible about how at one point he poked drugs into his eyeball and seemingly assaulted a cab driver — according to police reports. Now he writes for the NY Times.

That said, addiction memoirs are my favorite genre. David Carr still managed to stun me with The Night of the Gun.

1. As much as this book is about being a bad man who gets all hopped up and punches women in the face, this book is about my truth versus your truth and whether it coalesces with the documented proof. Two people sharing an experience and walking away with such different stories, whether it is:

Who actually owned the gun?
Did David Bowie sing directly to us?
What did witnesses see on 9/11?

Carr, the consummate journalist, provides documentation when possible. Arrest reports and published stories from his archives. Medical records. Direct quotes taken from videotaped interviews with friends and family. It is like he is saying: Look, my lows were low. Lower than you can exaggerate, low. And I’m not just some frat boy bragging about chugging Southern Comfort from a beer bong. Here is the official report.

This has to be the most honest addiction memoir I’ve ever read. And when what actually happened is debated, he defers to the less-broken brain.

2. You can read Anne Lamott and get the sense that she is never going to drink again. She has found a mix of spirituality and hiking, knows her triggers and has a way to sort of “time out” if she has to. After Marya Hornbacker wrote Wasted, it was hard to imagine her swirling her spoon around a mound of frozen yogurt again, lazily lapping at it for the next hour, getting full, and again dropping below 60 pounds. Maybe it’s because Carr is so committed to the best truth he can find, or because his teeter from 14 years of sobriety was so seamless — a simple hand-to-mouth muscle memory, almost — that this doesn’t memoir doesn’t necessarily feel like him riding off into the sunset. This feels like the wind could change any minute and he could be marinating his organs in gin.

An addict is an addict, he gets this: “I could be drunk tomorrow or shooting dope even as you read this, but the chances of that are low as long as I make a daily decision to embrace who I really am and then be satisfied with that at the end of every day,” he writes.

3. Carr seems to realize that addiction comes before everything. His loyalty to Jayson Blair’s fight is surprising, especially considering that Carr is so attracted to hard work and honesty. But when the NY Times reporter is outed for falsifying stories, Carr chases him down and begs him to not fall off the wagon in this moment. Maybe Carr is considering the reputation he built as a journalist, later doused in kerosene, and through the virtue of hard work and forgiveness, was able to resuscitate.

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Apr 17, 2012 rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, 2012

If I have learned anything from my life over the past couple of months -- obsessively watching prison documentaries, reading The Night of the Gun, volunteering -- it is that there is great courage and great utility in being honest about your past. Raising awareness of what you have done not only helps the world understand, it helps you complete your own recovery. I know some people do not heal from talking about things, but I do. So here is my admission: the hospital I mentioned in a previous re ...more If I have learned anything from my life over the past couple of months -- obsessively watching prison documentaries, reading The Night of the Gun, volunteering -- it is that there is great courage and great utility in being honest about your past. Raising awareness of what you have done not only helps the world understand, it helps you complete your own recovery. I know some people do not heal from talking about things, but I do. So here is my admission: the hospital I mentioned in a previous review was actually a behavioral hospital. I have been in rehab too. Not for addiction like David Carr, but for related mood disorders that I have struggled with for at least 12 years. At this point, it has officially been half of my life. I have never done drugs and my coping skills right now are top notch...but I have done some very stupid things because of this faulty wiring in my brain.

So I completely understand David Carr's impulse, upon leaving rehab and beginning his sober life after a sordid few years of crack/cocaine abuse and abuse of women, to detail his addicted past in his resumes and cover letters and to eventually write a book. Completing recovery means you have truly gone through some shit in your life. It also means that because you have seen the worst you're capable of, you will always be cautious of slipping back into that, even when your mind and body seem healthier than ever. Carr describes this well in his brief relapse with alcohol towards the end of the book.

One thing that impressed me about the book was that Carr's twin daughters were his impetus to change. Even though he didn't go get help immediately after their birth and the babies spent some time in crack dens, he wised up soon and committed to change in order to be a good father to them. I can tell you from my time spent in rehab among addicts that this is the exception, not the rule. And I'm not disparaging the people I met who had kids and were in for drug & alcohol. The addicts with children are most deserving of sympathy. They just illustrate the fact of how hard it is to overcome addiction even when your children come along and give you renewed strength. What Carr did is exceptional.

I got bored with his post-recovery life, if only because the journalism part of most journalist biographies tend to be very boring. See also: Rick Bragg. I understand that that part of the book is necessary -- to go from addiction to the New York Times is kind of a big deal. But I still have less than a passing interest in the details of most people's professional success. (Sorry, that sounds harsh.)

I do think this book is pretty inspirational, however. It is sweet and beautiful that he put so much effort into being a good parent and came out on the other end having achieved that, with two capable and happy adult children. At the risk of being a cheeseball, that is clearly his most important success.(less)

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rachel my dad still does the "You could have a teaching job/a play on Broadway/a bestselling novel" thing, which is....odd, because he's very depressed often...more
Apr 18, 2012 03:09pm

Moira Russell rachel wrote: "it has been my experience that the family members who are most hypercritical and cruel are the ones who are also depressed. It's so har...more
Apr 18, 2012 03:17pm

Feb 15, 2009 Patrick O'Neil rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The first half of the book was hard to read. Not because of the drug use, or the insanity that any human being's downward spiral consists of - dope fiend, or otherwise. No, the problem I had was I hated the narrator from the very first few pages. David Carr, or more specifically, Carr's behaviors and his lack of taking responsibilities, even now, years later. How he slapped his women around and treated others like shit. He even mentions this possibility, how the reader may not like him, and then...more

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Aug 22, 2008 Anthony Breznican rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: crime-story fans, journalists, troubled souls

"You can't know the whole truth," says David Carr. "But if there is one, it lies in the space between people."

Something haunting in that line, and relevant to anyone regardless of whether they share Carr's story of self-destruction and recovery.

This reformed thug, drug addict and spiraling loser pulls out of the dive at a critical moment, rescues his infant twin daughters (or is it the other way around?) and rebuilds a shattered career to become a columnist for The New York Times.

It's a ha...more

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Sep 17, 2008 Christina rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think this will be my last drug memoir for a while. The author is so evidently and coolly cashing in. I"m sure he'll be a big hit on the literary seminar circuit.

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Oct 29, 2008 Raven rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The concept of this book is great: as a former drug addict, David Carr has trouble recalling a great portion of his own life. Now an established reporter, Carr uses his reporting tools and techniques to uncover his own past. I believe everyone has a story, and I have no-doubt that Carr's is an interesting one. The research is promising, but the delivery needs serious work.

I cannot get through this book. I have tried & tried. I cannot seem to read more than four pages at a time. I am intelli...more

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Feb 24, 2009 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is reporter David Carr's answer to James Frey. For Carr's "junkie memoir," instead of just recalling (or fabricating) the past, he actually visits and interviews the people he did drugs with, bought drugs from, or hurt during the 1980s while he was an addict. He interviews his lawyers, his ex-girlfriends, his counselors, and the twin daughters whose birth inspired his recovery. He hopes this tactic will help him test his own memories and discover who he really was under the influence o...more

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Sep 13, 2008 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As I am reading this book currently, I have thus far learned that drugs and alcohol give you selective memory and you can be a real jerk on them.
Okay, I am crawling closer and closer to the end (I don't have as much time to read as I used to.) I hate to say it but I am now enjoying this book and beginning to kind of like David Carr.
But how did his twin daughters survive without health or behavioral issues while their mother smoked crack while pregnant? I guess my ob-gyn was right many years ago...more

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Aug 26, 2008 Ashley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-journalism

This is perhaps the best memoir I have ever read. The approach Carr takes to this overbaked genre is unique and genre-busting. He reports on his own life--interviewing, researching, synthesizing--and ends up with an endlessly engaging, brutally honest tome about a remarkable life. His voice is gritty, kind of wiseguy-ish, full of easy slang, reminded me of Jim Knipfel (which I consider to be a huge compliment, by the way). I couldn't read this book fast enough, stayed up late in the evening to r...more

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Sep 23, 2008 Anne rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: memoir "junkies" like myself

While I wanted to love this book, and it certainly provided some excellent gaper's block moments, overall I cannot say I would reccomend it. The concept is excellent: approaching a memoir from the perspective of a journalist. The result comes off as blowhard-y and bragadocious. Carr pretends to soul-search, but ultimately offers little in terms of wisdom about addiction or recovery. His descriptions of himself tend toward the hyperbolic. He was the WORST addict, the most THUGGISH white boy journ...more

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Jan 08, 2009 Caroline rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book starts out as a riveting investigative portrait of an addict's life, told by the addict, with the supposed "new twist" being that he uses his own rigorous journalistic techniques to fact-check his recollections. Memories he though were irrefutable turn out to be all-too-refutable by his friends and family as he digs through his messy past to try to discover the "truth" about what really happened in his chaotic life.

Carr actually maintains for quite a while this atmosphere of strict ac...more

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Mar 29, 2009 Bill Hall rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs

"Harrowing" might be the best single word to describe David Carr's memoir, "The Night of the Gun." Carr survived years of heavy cocaine and alcohol use and a bout with cancer to become an attentive father to his daughters, a faithful husband, and a productive and successful journalist. This is the story of his journey to hell and back (and a trip back to the hell of addiction after 14 years of sobriety).

Addiction memoirs are quite popular these days, but the genre suffered a severe blow in the w...more "Harrowing" might be the best single word to describe David Carr's memoir, "The Night of the Gun." Carr survived years of heavy cocaine and alcohol use and a bout with cancer to become an attentive father to his daughters, a faithful husband, and a productive and successful journalist. This is the story of his journey to hell and back (and a trip back to the hell of addiction after 14 years of sobriety).

Addiction memoirs are quite popular these days, but the genre suffered a severe blow in the wake of the scandal over James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces." Carr could be considered the anti-Frey. Throughout most of his life in addiction, and afterward, Carr has been a successful journalist. He brought his considerable writing and reporting skills to this project. Armed with his reporter's notebook and a video camera, he went out to comb through arrest and medical records and to face those who were in the middle of the maelstrom with him--and those who suffered with him.

The results are painful, and often, surprising. The title of the book refers to what he remembers vividly as a night when a close friend pulled a gun on him.

It didn't happen that way.

The evidence actually points to the opposite conclusion--that Carr was the one with a gun. He finds this hard to process, since he never recalls even owning a gun. This wasn't the only jarring memory had to confront. He faces the mother of his twin daughters, who remains convinced that Carr "stole" them from him. This time, though, Carr's memories, the memories of others, and the documentary record tend to support his conclusion--that he rescued them from a bad, possibly dangerous living situation (the girls' mother was even deeper in the grip of addiction than Carr).

Taking over as primary parent of his daughters seems to have been the pivotal moment in Carr's journey. The shock of realization that he's responsible for two young innocents propels Carr to rebuild the shattered pieces of his own life.

"The Night of the Gun" offers not only insights into the destructive power of substance abuse, but useful insights into the nature of memory itself.

Highly recommended.(less)

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Jan 03, 2009 Pris robichaud rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Epiphanies Are Fascinating, and The Scabs Gnarly, August 9, 2008
"Carr takes as a given that our memories are suspect, compromised by the understandable desire to make a coherent story from shapeless experience, to cast ourselves in the role of hero (or dashing villain), and to inject a bit of drama when the plot begins to sag." Jennifer Reese

David Carr, media critic for the New York Times has written an extraordinary book of his life of addiction. He tells the truth, but not enough of hims...more The Epiphanies Are Fascinating, and The Scabs Gnarly, August 9, 2008
"Carr takes as a given that our memories are suspect, compromised by the understandable desire to make a coherent story from shapeless experience, to cast ourselves in the role of hero (or dashing villain), and to inject a bit of drama when the plot begins to sag." Jennifer Reese

David Carr, media critic for the New York Times has written an extraordinary book of his life of addiction. He tells the truth, but not enough of himself is disclosed. I don't get a feel for the man until later in the book. True he researched this book like a journalist- he traced all of his old contacts and interviewed them because his memory was faulty at best. His depicitions and summaries of his friends and lovers are all well drawn out and illustrated. The story is not pretty. He started out as a drunk- one of 3 or 4 in his immediate family, by the way. He then moved on to cocaine and finally injecting it. Drugs were his life, he lived for them. His friends were the ones who helped him get his drugs. His girlfriends, part of the crowd. And he worked to buy the drugs,got fired, somehow got drugs again and found a job and on and on. His girlfriend Anna, got pregnant and on the night he gave her a needle to inject cocaine, her water broke. The twins were born 2 1/2 months early. He still did drugs and so did she. He gave up drugs the night he left his twins in the car in the middle of winter to go buy his drugs- he left them in the car for 5 minutes or was it hours- who knows?

David Carr goes straight for many years. Bringing up his twins alone for six years, meets the love of his life, marries, has another child, moves along on his journalism carrer. The portrait of his family, his twin girls and wife are revealing and insightful. And, then, well things were too good, so he starts drinking again. Up until this portion of the story, it is pretty cut and dry and sometimes boring. The latter part of his life with his new wife and children are the most interesting portions. He and his family are brought to life. I start to care about this man and the women in it. His story is straight and true, and not as hyped up and gaudy as James Frey's story of addiction. David Carr finally comes to life and in just in time.

"The epiphanies are fascinating, and the scabs gnarly
Even when Carr does eventually enter rehab and make good, his tale veers unnervingly from the familiar and reassuring arc of the recovery narrative. Maybe that's what happens when you stick to the facts. Carr is as immoderate in his drive to unearth every detail of his sordid past as he once was to hoover up that last grain of coke on the floor. You may not forgive Carr his flamboyant misdeeds as readily as he seems to forgive himself, all the while patting himself on the back for his brutal honesty. But he is an undeniably brilliant and dogged journalist. "Jennifer Reese

Recommended. prisrob 08-09-08

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Dec 09, 2008 Danielle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Written by New York Times reporter David Carr, this book is written based on memories, interviews, and documentation about Carr's earlier life as a cocaine addict. After discussing the titled night of the gun with a friend and reading his twin daughters college admission essays, Carr realizes that perhaps the memories he has of his life as a drug addict and his experiences overcoming the addiction may not be what actually happened. He conducts interviews with people involved in his life during t...more

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Dec 02, 2008 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I first read about this book I thought: Do we really need another book about an individual's battle with drugs and alcohol? It seems that every month there is a new addict memoir. What intrigued me about Carr's book was his technique, a clear reaction to the scandal surrounding James Frey's memoir exposed as addiction fiction. Carr decides to use his journalism skills to investigate his life as an addict. He does research reading police reports, news articles, letters, diaries, etc. and con...more When I first read about this book I thought: Do we really need another book about an individual's battle with drugs and alcohol? It seems that every month there is a new addict memoir. What intrigued me about Carr's book was his technique, a clear reaction to the scandal surrounding James Frey's memoir exposed as addiction fiction. Carr decides to use his journalism skills to investigate his life as an addict. He does research reading police reports, news articles, letters, diaries, etc. and conducts numerous interviews to see how his memories of several past incidents jive with his memory of them.

As he investigates, he discovers that crucial pieces of the story of his life were not as he remembers. This is not surprising given the state he was in when they occurred (drunk and stoned and more). The fact that most of the people he interviews were in the same state also means their memories are equally suspect. Most disturbing are the pieces of documentary evidence, including medical records and police reports, that point to entire incidents that Carr has no memory of. The whole exercise is quite interesting as an examination of memory and how we choose to construct our own stories.

The narrative arc follows other similar works I have read. The beginning is all about the addiction; middle section on the epiphany or moment when the addict knows he has to change; final section is about life post-recovery. The very thing that makes this original--the journalistic attempt to verify or correct memories--proves to be the book's biggest problem. Every time a new character in his life is introduced, the reader can expect the second half of the chapter to be a modern-day interview with that person. It all gets to be a bit contrived and forced after a while and the constant jumping from past to present tends to interrupt any real narrative rhythm or coherence.

Another issue some readers might have with this book is that Carr is far from a sympathetic character for the first two hundred pages (and he knows it). Not only is he a drunk and a junkie but he repeatedly strikes women in his life. There were several times during the early part of the book, where I found myself thinking, Why do I care about this jerk?

Even with these criticisms, Carr's story is compelling enough that you keep reading. And, Carr is an excellent writer who paces the story quite well. He is attuned to a reader who might grow disgusted with his antics/attitude and--at just the right moment--foreshadows the changes to come, which keeps interest from flagging. Despite my early reaction to the book and its self-centered, self-obsessed narrator, I found that he not only kept me reading but had won me over by the end.(less)

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Nov 29, 2008 W rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What the book really needs is a review by a reliable addict. Doesn’t exist, I know, but it should. At first, I thought THE NIGHT OF THE GUN a daring approach to the memoir quagmire—what’s real, what’s not. Carr promises to take ruthless honesty in researching the facts of one’s past to the fifth power.

Who actually had the gun that night? This is a common experience in most people. Well, not guns, but it is always startling to suddenly realize a dearly held memory is unrelated to reality. I rece...more What the book really needs is a review by a reliable addict. Doesn’t exist, I know, but it should. At first, I thought THE NIGHT OF THE GUN a daring approach to the memoir quagmire—what’s real, what’s not. Carr promises to take ruthless honesty in researching the facts of one’s past to the fifth power.

Who actually had the gun that night? This is a common experience in most people. Well, not guns, but it is always startling to suddenly realize a dearly held memory is unrelated to reality. I recently learned that a childhood friend whom I vividly recall seeing hit and killed by a car outside his house is alive and well all these years and is enjoying life. I was five, but Yikes!

So, okay, here’s a guy, a typical recovering alcoholic, who is going typically way over the top in fourth and fifth stepping his ego. He goes back home and video tapes his interviews with all the folks he had harmed, and is going to make a full, ruthless, irrefutable confession in this memoir. And, I’m impressed. Here’s an award winning journalist with big market recognition putting it all on the line.

However, for all the commitment to ruthless honesty, he glosses over many people and incidents—understandably protecting those innocents that he vowed not to. Let the chips fall on whomever, but for you, my dear, an umbrella.

I grew a little jaundiced but remained intrigued–until, late in the book, where he talks about falling off the wagon periodically. Worse, he offhandedly mentions he was abusing prescribed Oxycontin during “sobriety,” and while writing the book. Maybe the point is brilliant—a true depiction of the addict’s self-deception--who could be more duplicitously oblivious to the amorality of addiction than the one who has consciously and unconsciously know it so long.

Frankly, when the Oxycontin made its appearance the story collapsed. No matter the reason for the prescription, there is no sobriety with Oxycontin. As they say in AA, “don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” especially yourself. Oxy empowers the lizard brain in ways that defies reason, logic, or any vestiges of dignity.

It’s an interesting story, but it lacks the redemptive quality. Carr is more in the process of recovering than recovery. Third hand reports identified a besotted Carr at the Democratic convention.

Moreover, the book does not solve the memoir dilemma as to what’s real, and what’s not. Rather, it proves the problem. Memoirs are as selective of memory as memory is of the past, and the past often remembers little.

I’d rather read James Frey on L.A. “The final belief,” Wallace Stevens wrote, “is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else.”

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Apr 26, 2013 Heather rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love the core project of this book - fact-checking and cross-checking his memories of events and personal interactions. Addiction isn't even a necessary element...though it does lead him into situations of higher than normal violence, chaos and danger.

I didn't like the author. I wanted him to recover and stop hurting himself and others, but I often rolled my eyes at his rather humble-bragging accounts of his loyal mentors, devoted wife, inspiring daughters, friends and colleagues who never lo...more

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Aug 11, 2012 G.d. Brennan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The Night of the Gun" is a great sobriety memoir--and a slap in the face to most other authors in the genre.

Whereas other "memoir" authors (cough--James Frey--cough) bent events to fit their narrative, Carr takes the opposite approach, and looks for the truth behind the stories he's told to himself and others over the years. He's searching for facts, not memories, and trying to reshape the latter to fit the former. It's an approach that sets this book above so many others--as an experienced wor...more "The Night of the Gun" is a great sobriety memoir--and a slap in the face to most other authors in the genre.

Whereas other "memoir" authors (cough--James Frey--cough) bent events to fit their narrative, Carr takes the opposite approach, and looks for the truth behind the stories he's told to himself and others over the years. He's searching for facts, not memories, and trying to reshape the latter to fit the former. It's an approach that sets this book above so many others--as an experienced working journalist, Carr has different priorities than the essayists and fabulists he's up against.

There are correlations and dichotomies between journalism and alcoholism. A journalist wants to remember things; an alcoholic often drinks to forget. And yet both love stories, and alcohol is a sure lubricant to get them flowing, so it isn't really surprising there's such overlap between the circles--an intersection where Carr found himself having the same accidents for many long years.

As with all alcoholics, the details are harrowing--and ordinary. Carr's particular passions were crack and brown liquor, and they took him to bad places--threatening violence against friends, perpetrating it against women, and using drugs with the mother of his children while she was pregnant with said children. Every addict and alcoholic believes themselves unique, but their disease takes them all down different sides of the same funnel, and towards the same place--a hole of spiritual emptiness and mental and physical destruction. And paridoxically, this is where Carr's book shines--it's easy to paint one's drinking and drugging as fun and tough and glamorous, but it's a lot harder--and more worthwhile--to take a long, sober look at behavior and consequences.

Where it occasionally falls flat is in chronicling his return to respectable society. Andy Rooney once wrote a great column debunking the whole "why-don't-they-report-the-good-news?" question--the column was full of good news, and sentences like this: "The orange crop in Florida was hit by another day of average weather. The oranges just hung there and grew." His point was simple: Good news is boring. It's boring because it's what's supposed to happen.

Perhaps that's the problem with journalists and alcoholics. More so than most, they find the bad compelling, intriguing, and worthy of endless attention. Though sober now, Carr did not stay that way the whole time--he, in programspeak, "transferred to the R&D wing of the organization for additional research." To his credit, though, he writes honestly and forthrightly about this episode and what led up to it--an unwillingness, or a failure, do do what a program of recovery demands. One's memory even of one's own life is fungible, and that's what keeps so many alcoholics waking up again and again to the same old bad news. (less)

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Jul 31, 2012 Spencer rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

well, it wasn't what i was expecting. when i read about the book, i thought he literally took his tape recorder, gave a brief intro, and let everyone else talk about their versions of the stories he forgot or got wrong. it's not. the author just uses the interviews as source material for his own narration of events, and i don't think i ever got over the disappointment of not getting what i expected.

the author acknowledges himself as self-absorbed, and despite giving up drugs and booze, his self-...more well, it wasn't what i was expecting. when i read about the book, i thought he literally took his tape recorder, gave a brief intro, and let everyone else talk about their versions of the stories he forgot or got wrong. it's not. the author just uses the interviews as source material for his own narration of events, and i don't think i ever got over the disappointment of not getting what i expected.

the author acknowledges himself as self-absorbed, and despite giving up drugs and booze, his self-absorption shows through in the book. i suppose it's unavoidable in a semi-autobiography, but it's still grating. since no editor is mentioned or thanked, i have to assume he edited his own novel. this is sort of unfortunate, as some of the idiosyncrasies of diction and typos would probably have been ironed out. you get the sense that he feels lucky, but a touch more humility would go a long way.

but, with all that out of the way, this was a good book. it's a well told story that reads fast. even though he pats himself on the back for it, the author does avoid the unwelcome tropes of the addiction novel - wallowing self-pity, endless supplication to god, excessive gratefulness and uncomfortable proselytizing. i enjoyed reading about his dual life, his openness in explaining both the good and bad sides of his days, and his vivid descriptions of his old running buddies and how they get on (or don't). I also appreciate his distrust of his own memory and determination in uncovering his own dark past. as someone who forgets (intentionally or not) just about every bad word and deed said and heard, i can relate the difficulty the author must have faced in having to hear a different, more accurate, and probably more depressing version of the events than he remembered. his own analysis of memory leaves something to be desired, but the guy's a journalist, not a doctor. he keeps it brief and mostly personal.

a good book, but not a classic or an enthusiastic recommendation. actually, kinda makes me want to pick up a gram.(less)

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Jul 17, 2012 PJ rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-history-reference

I really wanted to like this book.

I've heard NPR interviews with David Carr and he was engaging and likable. I read some of his professional work and it was good.

All the parts were there, but ultimately, this book just wasn't engaging.

The premise - reported David Carr, now a in recovery addict, investigates his own memories and past "adventures" with chemicals, asking the question of himself "Do you only remember the things you can live with".

This book is a different kind of reportage and though...more

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Jun 22, 2012 Ryan Holiday rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Cognitive Dissonance ruins most memoirs. You can sort of hear the author rationalizing their actions to you, or in other cases, so they're oblivious to the meaning of their own behavior that it renders the rest of their insights worthless. Memoirs about drug addiction or trauma are particularly bad, because it's difficult for people to deeply, and self-critically view how bad things were. The memoir of a crack-addict father of twins turned staff writer for the New York Times should be one of tho...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Rachael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was like the addiction anti-memoir. I love how candid Carr is in his assessment of himself. He freely admits that the easy story would be that he was a generally good guy who took a couple of wrong turns and then got his life back on track. But instead, he tells the tough story: he was high, he was a jerk, he hit women, he left his twin baby girls in the car on a winter night while he went into a house to do drugs. I don't think memoir gets much more honest than this. It's a great stor...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Maduck831 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Even if I had amazing recall, and I don’t, recollection is often just self-fashioning. Some of it is reflexive, designed to bury truths that cannot be swallowed, but other “memories” are just redemption myths writ small. Personal narrative is not simply opening up a vein and letting the blood flow forward anyone willing to stare. The historical self is created to keep dissonance at bay and render the subject palatable in the present.” (9) [Brautigan – author] [Anthony Trollope, Autobiography] “...more “Even if I had amazing recall, and I don’t, recollection is often just self-fashioning. Some of it is reflexive, designed to bury truths that cannot be swallowed, but other “memories” are just redemption myths writ small. Personal narrative is not simply opening up a vein and letting the blood flow forward anyone willing to stare. The historical self is created to keep dissonance at bay and render the subject palatable in the present.” (9) [Brautigan – author] [Anthony Trollope, Autobiography] “I pretended I knew what I was doing – isn’t that what most life rests on?” (47) “No matter. He was my friend then, and he is my friend now. By my reckoning, you are issued about a dozen friends in life, and if one of mine happens to be in a prison jumpsuit, well, better him than me, but that doesn’t erase the bond.” (100) “Everyone works for someone. The hooker is either working for the pimp or her two-year-old. The stripper works for the dope dealer or the no-good boyfriend. And the deeper I went into the drug economy, I found that everyone, even the person who managed big money and serious weight, was working for someone else.” (108) “Don’t we all? It is the stopping, the quitting, the walking away that we cannot abide because the ceaseless activity keeps the accounting at bay. The mania of addiction, as expressed by anything – coke, booze, betting, sex – finds renewed traction every time it halts because once the perpetrator stops and sees how deeply and truly his life now sucks, there is only one thing that will make him feel better: more of same.” (141) “Long before TiVo, humans have been prone to selecting, editing, and fast-forwarding the highlights of their lives.” (183) “Memory remains an act of perception, albeit perception dulled by time, but it is also about making a little movie. Remembering is an affirmative act – recalling those events that made you you is saying who you are. I am not this book, but this book is me.” (182) “In Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie writes about the “special kind” of truth that memory conjures. “It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also. But in the end it creates its own reality, its own heterogenous but usually coherent version of events, and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.” (183) “When the past is shifted to the present moment, it is infected by a consistency bias that requires that all things fit together, whether they do or not. Examine your own family history and folklore if you don’t buy it. How many of those stories are literally, exactly true?” (185) “11. The problem with your life is behavior, not disclosure. Secrets are what addiction calls foreplay. If you want to live a life that you can be honest about, live one that is worthy. The answer to life is learning to live.” (190) [John – Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press] “In my replies, I tried to console him by pointing out how hard it is for human beings to think beyond their immediate solution. It is a matter of feeling and not of reason: prone to consider the present their abiding lot, they are incapable, so to speak, of seeing round the corner – and that probably applies more to bad situations than to good ones. – Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus (234)” “The future is even more fungible than the past: We can make it up, assert it will be so, and no one can say it won’t happen with any surety. Herman Melville, in talking about history, said that the past is the textbooks of tyrants, while the future is the bible of the free.” (303) “Memories may be based on what happened to begin with, but they are reconstituted each time they are recalled – with the most-remembered events frequently the least accurate. What one is remembering is the memory, not the event.” (334) [Martyrs’ Day] “Sobriety means that wherever you go, there you are, for good or ill.” (356) “What to do when that malevolence comes from the self?” (360) “Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part of other and to a greater or lesser extent” – Sigmund Freud, (379) “I now inhabit a life I don’t deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn’t end any time soon.” (382) [www.nightofthegun.com] (less)

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Jul 30, 2011 Carole LoConte Tedesco rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this after reading the excerpt in The NY Times Magazine, and feeling frustrated by a number of questions left unanswered by the excerpt.

Carr writes well, and I found the narrative to be compelling, but at times frustrating. Some of his reporting on his years of drug abuse seemed to have an almost bragging tone (as in "can you believe that I actually did this!"), despite the overall tone of regret for his years spent in "The Life."

Toward the end of the book, I found myself mystified and ev...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Allison added it · review of another edition

I'll admit I have always had a thing for addiction memoirs. I really don't care what the author was/is addicted to, I just need a decently written book that will spare no detail. I thought I was coming to end of my love affair with the junkie-story, but this one caught my eye because of the premise: David Carr is a journalist, and the decision to write this book was motivated by a desire to make every chapter of his life a fact-finding mission. He set out to interview all the major players -- on...more I'll admit I have always had a thing for addiction memoirs. I really don't care what the author was/is addicted to, I just need a decently written book that will spare no detail. I thought I was coming to end of my love affair with the junkie-story, but this one caught my eye because of the premise: David Carr is a journalist, and the decision to write this book was motivated by a desire to make every chapter of his life a fact-finding mission. He set out to interview all the major players -- on audio and videotape. He dug through police records. He begged photos off of people. He decided to attempt to fashion the most honest and accurate story of his life that he could, and he was perfectly willing, even relieved, to hear versions of events that differed from his own recollections.

He stared his career as a journalist (small Minnesota papers) just about the time he started his career as a junkie (cocaine -- injected and or/smoked). He was very successful at both. Beginning at age 23 he partied and wrote, and went to rehab and wrote, and relapsed and wrote, until he became unsteadily sober at about age 35 when he suddenly becomes the single parent of twin infant girls. His story, as told from the perspective of dozens of others, official records, and his own memory, comes off as ....honest.

It doesn't hurt Carr's case that he is almost completely without hubris -- even his successes as a New York Times columnist are played down. He is almost overly self-deprecating, but this falls under the heading of "I was a selfish, deluded prick and deserved every beat-down I ever got." He paints himself as person of average looks and intelligence who got by on brute charm, drug-fueled machismo, and freakishly good luck while he lurched his way from jobs to drugs to women to and to fatherhood, not aways in that order.

The incident that the book is named for "The Night of the Gun" is a series of events that take place one night when the author felt he was at a particular lowpoint -- his recollection is that he was so fucked up and so potentially dangerous that his friend pulled a gun on him, called the cops and told him to run. Years later, the friend recounts an opposite version of the night's events, once in which Carr, fucked up and dangerous, pulls a gun on his friend and the friend calls the cops. Carr swore he had never owned a gun, hates guns, would have had to go to the friend's house with the gun hidden on his person -- couldn't have happened. His friend refuses to back down on the story and Carr subsequently finds a gun permit with his name on it. Now the story has an even lower lowpoint.

So that's the center of it here: we all have our own memories and stories and sometimes they don't line up with the other guy's memories and stories, especially if one or both people were chemically altered. Carr is perfectly aware that memory is spotty at best and often missing or fabricated. That's why all the fact-checking and interviewing and document diving was necessary -- Carr wanted to get as close to the "truth" as possible -- isn't that what every good journalist wants? No one has ever defined truth and Carr certainly doesn't here, but he makes one hell of an effort, and credit is due.

cool website too: www.nightofthegun.com (less)

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Feb 22, 2011 Paul Pessolano rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Bold, daring, provocatived, and true.

David Carr, in his memoir, gives us a brutal yet honest story of his life. We are given an insight into drug and alcohol abuse that few would even dare to expose.

Carr is a journalist who was doing exceptionally well writing for different papers and magazines, but all of this came crashing down on him. As with most addicts it started out small and then escalated into something out of control. He lost his job, and to feed his habit became a pusher himself.

He ma...more

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Feb 17, 2011 Caitlin Constantine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved the concept of this book very, very much, particularly as someone who writes memoir and is constantly struggling with notions of truth and reality and memory. Carr has all of these ideas about his life as an addict, but when he goes to fact-check them, like any responsible journalist would, he finds out that his recollection is often not in line with those possessed by others. Shocking, I know, considering that it sounds like Carr did, in the words of Robin Williams in "Good Will Hunting...more

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Nov 25, 2010 Marti rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Eh, Carr rubs me the wrong way. I know, it would be irresponsible of me to judge a book by how much I like (or don't like) its author. So I'll try not to.
Carr's goal here is truth. But there is something so over-the-top and smug about using the memoir format to dig up past acquaintances and videotape them commenting on those dark days. (Carr also notes that this is uncomfortable.) Sure he digs up some useful info and reveals a lot about our own version of the truth vs. reality. But even that met...more

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Oct 03, 2010 Carrie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think the LA Times review says it best: "And though it is one of the most eloquent accounts of the seduction and snare of addiction...this book, in its sharp, serrated prose, is a meditation on how memory works (but mostly how it doesn't), a man's obsessive effort to get at his life's true narrative using the skills he's honed as a reporter, the one piece of his life that didn't combust."

I found this to be the most compelling memoir I've ever read, though I can't say I've read all that many of...more I think the LA Times review says it best: "And though it is one of the most eloquent accounts of the seduction and snare of addiction...this book, in its sharp, serrated prose, is a meditation on how memory works (but mostly how it doesn't), a man's obsessive effort to get at his life's true narrative using the skills he's honed as a reporter, the one piece of his life that didn't combust."

I found this to be the most compelling memoir I've ever read, though I can't say I've read all that many of them. It simultaneously uses journalistic techniques as a way of showing us how we can get as close as possible to the ever-elusive, ever-changing "truth," while at the same time revealing how much of that truth is conditional, rooted in faulty memory, and ultimately impossible to capture in more than any one moment in time. It teeters along what Stephen Ward calls "pragmatic objectivity," in which the author tries to toe the thin line between relativism and certainty, to create a space where at least we can understand...something, for a moment, in order to keep moving forward through life.

I also thought this book was brutally honest. A couple reviewers called it "self-serving" and said it was clear Carr was cashing in, but throughout I guess I just felt like I could so easily see the bits that could have been smoothed over even just slightly, to make him seem just a little bit less like a jerk - but they weren't. Smacking around women. Getting into a car drunk with his twin daughters. Things abhorrent enough to make your skin crawl, much worse than even the ugliness of addiction itself, even though Carr is highly likable somehow in the story as well. Even his own narcissism is somehow laid bare in its ugliest dimensions even as it is served through the writing of a book like this.

As New York Times columnist, Carr is enough of a a name that he could have simply written another classic addition tale with some scary stories and probably still sold some books. I'm a strong advocate of openness and I believe that privacy is overrated, and I'm a big believer in disclosure in my own life, but this is a kind of courage I can't quite contemplate. Door to the closet thrown utterly open with not even the patina of self-serving lies we tell ourselves.(less)

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Jul 26, 2010 Joyce Hansen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: addiction, adult-non-fiction, alcoholism, autobiography, biography, bio-memoir, drug-addiction, drugs, drug-addicts, investigative-reporting, journalism, journalists, new-york-times, recovery, relapse, reporter, true-crime, twins, reporting, 2008

Do we remember only the stories we can live with? The ones that make us look good in the rearview mirror? In The Night of the Gun, David Carr redefines memoir with the revelatory story of his years as an addict and chronicles his journey from crack-house regular to regular columnist for The New York Times. Built on sixty videotaped interviews, legal and medical records, and three years of reporting,The Night of the Gun is a ferocious tale that uses the tools of journalism to fact-check the past....more Do we remember only the stories we can live with? The ones that make us look good in the rearview mirror? In The Night of the Gun, David Carr redefines memoir with the revelatory story of his years as an addict and chronicles his journey from crack-house regular to regular columnist for The New York Times. Built on sixty videotaped interviews, legal and medical records, and three years of reporting,The Night of the Gun is a ferocious tale that uses the tools of journalism to fact-check the past. Carr's investigation of his own history reveals that his odyssey through addiction, recovery, cancer, and life as a single parent was far more harrowing -- and, in the end, more miraculous -- than he allowed himself to remember. Over the course of the book, he digs his way through a past that continues to evolve as he reports it. That long-ago night he was so out of his mind that his best friend had to pull a gun on him to make him go away? A visit to the friend twenty years later reveals that Carr was pointing the gun. His lucrative side business as a cocaine dealer? Not all that lucrative, as it turned out, and filled with peril. His belief that after his twins were born, he quickly sobered up to become a parent? Nice story, if he could prove it. The notion that he was an easy choice as a custodial parent once he finally was sober? His lawyer pulls out the old file and gently explains it was a little more complicated than that. In one sense, the story of The Night of the Gun is a common one -- a white-boy misdemeanant lands in a ditch and is restored to sanity through the love of his family, a God of his understanding, and a support group that will go unnamed. But when the whole truth is told, it does not end there. After fourteen years -- or was it thirteen? -- Carr tried an experiment in social drinking. Double jeopardy turned out to be a game he did not play well. As a reporter and columnist at the nation's best newspaper, he prospered, but gained no more adeptness at mood-altering substances. He set out to become a nice suburban alcoholic and succeeded all too well, including two more arrests, one that included a night in jail wearing a tuxedo. Ferocious and eloquent, courageous and bitingly funny, The Night of the Gun unravels the ways memory helps us not only create our lives, but survive them.(less)

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The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own.

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